The 2024-2025 Assembly cohort comprises: Abrar Kebaili, Ayesha Fernandes, Desiree Barreto, Ioanna Orphanide, Jared Maxilom, Manal Nadeem, Omar Darwish, Sanjushrree Subash and Syed Haider. The programme is designed, curated and facilitated by Abhirami Suresh, Library and Youth Coordinator at Art Jameel, in collaboration with Nabeeha Sajjad, Communications Assistant at Art Jameel and alumnus of The Assembly 2023-2024. 

Abhirami Suresh is the Library and Youth Coordinator at Art Jameel. She is the curator of the Assembly programme and works with the Learning, Exhibitions and Programming teams to direct youth projects at Jameel Arts Centre. Abhirami specialised in spatial narrative systems, creative research and community engagement. Her research and curatorial practice has been presented at international conferences and the London Design Biennale 2021. Abhirami was awarded the Ford Foundation Grant 2020, the Young Curator Residency for Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival 2022 and the Curatorial Fellowship with Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022.

Nabeeha Sajjad, a multimedia artist based in Dubai, transforms concepts into compelling realities. As an alumna of Jameel’s Youth Assembly 23/24, she continues to develop her skills with the Art Jameel team as a Communications Assistant, and involvement with the Assembly programme as Peer Curator for the 24/25 cycle. With a degree in Multimedia Design from the American University of Sharjah, Nabeeha employs an experimental approach that blends philosophy, photography, videography and design to create visually captivating narratives.

Abrar Kebaili is a multimedia artist and creative designer focusing on exhibition visuals. Blending diverse perspectives with conceptual storytelling, Abrar’s work captures the unique essence of each project. Passionate about Islamic art, she seeks to create thought-provoking designs that bridge personal narrative and cultural expression.

Ayesha Fernandes is a Sharjah-based visual artist and designer. She explores the material qualities of unconventional mediums by taking inspiration from nature and her surrounding environment. With a B.Sc in Visual Communication from the American University of Sharjah, her work often merges digital and analogue processes.

Desirée Barreto a multidisciplinary creative and writer by trade, delicately toys with satirical forms to produce zeitgeist-critical work. Creating and externalising through a multimedia, omnichannel approach, their craft examines the construction of the digital self, the accumulation of taste, cultural value production and post-irony through an intersectional lens. 

Ioanna Orphanide is (1) a student of literature and (2) a poet. She is currently working on getting used to ‘artist’ as a title, one that she cannot help but hyphenate to reflect her background: hence, (3) commuter-artist. Commuting spatially between the Eastern Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf, conceptually between the post-colonial and historically-modern, and materially between the analog and born-digital (humanities and more), she also loves tea and confabulating excessively in multiple languages.

Jared Maxilom is a Dubai-based multidisciplinary artist and poet. His work, inspired by the Filipino migrant experience, spans poetry, photography, tech, and product design. Jared’s creative projects explore themes of identity, memory, and culture, blending traditional and digital mediums to tell compelling narratives.

Manal Nadeem is a UAE-raised Pakistani majoring in International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. Through her prismatic approach–an ethnographer’s eye, an academic’s mind, and a writer’s heart–Manal marries the microscopic and macroscopic, politicising the personal and interrogating everyday experiences, ranging from migration to environmentalism, through an intersectional lens.

Omar Darwish, a Pan-Arabian architect and researcher raised in the UAE, studies at the American University of Sharjah. Recipient of the 2024 Sheikh Khalifa Scholarship, he explores history and knowledge exchange in the Arab countries and its architectural and political implications today.

Sanjushrree Subash is a Dubai-based exhibition designer and a visual artist. Her practice explores the intersection of design with fields such as literature and anthropology, and incorporates concepts of play. Her work is inspired by the mundane and ordinary things to create immersive spaces that prompt deeper questions.

Syed Haider, a Pakistani multidisciplinary artist, is an award-winning poet, and the author of the book,‘Anyway, Don’t Be a Stranger: A Collection of Poetry & Prose’. Haider’s writing explores themes of love, grief, nostalgia, culture and identity. He blends his creativity through mediums of poetry, filmmaking, visual art and spoken word. At the heart of Haider’s expressive work is community: he hosts open mic events at The Basement in Sharjah, which continues to pave the way for artists like him to express their capabilities.

The Assembly engages with Art Jameel’s exhibitions and programmes, resources and the Art Jameel team to explore concepts driven by broadening ways of seeing, ways of perceiving and challenging methods on interpretation. Over the programme, the Assembly’s activities and engagements will work towards contributing to discourse around themes of meaning-making through engagement with movement, language and community through experimental, co-creative and participatory activities. The programme continues to empower young creatives within institutional spaces and nurture spaces of care, communication and collaboration as creative enablers.